The trials and tribulations of a big change!

The (silly) B-day Cake

Alright so as I mentioned in another post, I’ve been taking photos, but I haven’t actually posted any. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s just that I forget about them or run out of time. Well, on 2 April it was Mani’s 27th birthday and I wanted to bake a cake for him. But the problem about being English and living in Germany is that all the instructions on baking products…well, any products really…are in German. And it’s not like I’m stupid and cannot figure the instructions out, but I just didn’t want his birthday cake, of all cakes, to be a flop. So I had a clever idea (in Afrikaans we have a saying…’ ‘n Boer maak ‘n plan’ –> ‘A Boer makes a plan’). So I bought a pre-made sponge cake, some chocolate and chocolate covered, coloured peanuts. The plan was to melt the chocolate and cover the sponge cake with it, and then ‘write’ happy birthday with the nuts…but the thing about plans is that they don’t always work….

Let me show you what I mean. This is how the cake turned out:

Now you see…the thing about this cake is that it actually says something…can you figure out what it says? Do I hear you say ‘no’? Well, it says ‘Happy B-D’, I promise it does 😦 When Mani first looked at it, he said, ‘Oh cute, you put a smiley face on it’, to which I replied, ‘No, there’s no smiley face! It says Happy B-D’. Still can’t see it? Ok, let me show you…

See, it does say Happy B-D. Anyway, moving on.

I had a little friend visit me the other day – I’m not used to seeing pigeons quite this big, so excuse me if you think it’s funny that I took a photo of a pigeon. Yeah sure, in South Africa we have big birds- like Ostriches – but our pigeons are a tad smaller!

What’s really surprised me here in Berlin is the fact that birds chatter all the time. Back home, they chatter from about 5am until 6pm – and then they sleep. Oh no, not here in Berlin! No – here the birds chat away continually. For instance, whilst planting flowers on the balcony at midnight last night (that’s for another post…), some bird was sitting in a random tree chatting away like nobody’s business. For what reason, I’m not sure, perhaps he/she was just happy and felt the need to talk to anyone who’d listen – but back at home, that wouldn’t happen, no matter how strongly a bird felt the urge to chat. Anyway, that’s arbitrary, random information that I thought you should know. Well, now you know.